here’s the link i clicked:  Channel9.msdn.com – good intro to various game dev issues.  Remains to be seen if someone can slog through it in a timely manner.  Overcoming the IDE integrated development environment issues may be summed up as IDE is a place to slap your code in.  Type it, copy/paste it, and generally find winning recipes to get something done immediately.  Something to show for the coding.  Even small victories like int x=1+1, to store as int lifePoints; are big victories.  Getting from square one to half-way playable game is a long way.  It is too easy to get lost in the minutiae on the way to a playable game.  Pareto principle is in effect.

Taking on a less ambitious task, like programming an EA, Expert Advisor, for forex, (and knowing the right LIBRARY code to use) that simplified programming, broke my, ‘heh this is really useful and fun!’ , learn to program hurdle.

With LIBRARIES of code to copy/paste with and a customizable full working EA, I was able to ‘crack the code’ and program a moderately useful program.  A lot of programming is knowing which function in a program library goes where.  Line by line writing of code is a dinosaur.  Though occasionally useful to code line by line, it is usually more important to link into a function library.  Good luck in linking, loading, and copy/pasting lines of library code.  I think it is more important for some people to half-code and have something performing than to know the detailed syntax and linking structures.  Syntax is minor, easily fixed and learned, still time consuming, and unnecessary to understand overall structure of a program that gets me producing fast.

I feel the approach to programming put forward on this website is a great way to get an idea of at least one working recipe to get a game from idea to code, to playable.